1. How Do We Develop the Young Workforce?
Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen - welcome to the Scottish Learning Festival 2017 and to ‘Talking Tomorrows: How Do We Develop the Young Workforce?’.
This afternoon’s seminar will centre on presentations delivered by 2 South Lanarkshire schools who I am sure will leave you all feeling inspired by their approaches to supporting learners towards building the skills and experience needed to ensure success in the adult world post-school.
As well as taking notes, it goes without saying that you should feel free to snap photographs of the presentation slides and also to make contact to request copies of presentations. Our addresses will be peppered throughout the presentations and are all collated on a slide at the end.
Talking Tomorrows
How Do We Develop the Young Workforce?

2. Aims
Share South Lanarkshire schools’ practice in Developing the Young Workforce
Deliver a variety of curricular and community approaches from the practitioners, parents, partners and pupils from Calderglen High School and Larkhall Academy’s school communities
Offer pupil perspectives from the South Lanarkshire Talking Tomorrows report.
The aims of today’s session are to:
Share South Lanarkshire schools’ practice in Developing the Young Workforce
Deliver a variety of curricular and community approaches from the practitioners, parents, partners and pupils from Calderglen High School and Larkhall Academy’s school communities
Offer pupil perspectives from the South Lanarkshire Talking Tomorrows report.
#talkingtomorrows

3. Welcome Peter Kelly – (Teacher) Holy Cross High School
Talking Tomorrows report
Julie Allardyce (DHT Larkhall Academy/QIO Inclusion, SLC)
Partner: Fay Kiwak/Hazel Shaw (Machan Trust)
Community approaches
Mhairi Healy (Teacher) Calderglen High School
Pupils: Heather Donnelly, Jennifer Livingstone and Katrina Plunkett
Parent: Kirsty Donnelly
Curricular approaches
I should introduce myself before I go any further. My name is Peter Kelly and I am a teacher at Holy Cross High School in Hamilton. I will be sharing with you a whistlestop tour of a project called Talking Tomorrows which I conducted whilst working with schools across South Lanarkshire as Health and Wellbeing Development Officer on, amongst other things, Developing the Young Workforce.
Following my introductory presentation on the learner voice, I will be handing over to Calderglen High School and Larkhall Academy whose curricular and community-based approaches have been offering opportunities to young people in keeping with the new challenges and expectations of our constantly evolving world of work.
#talkingtomorrows

4. Please use the following hashtags… #talkingtomorrows #slf17
Tweeting Tomorrows!
Please use the following hashtags…
#talkingtomorrows
#slf17
You are very welcome to Tweet during the seminar and it would be great if you used the hashtags #SLF17 and #talkingtomorrows as part of your comments. Please do use both in your posts and comments!
As today’s seminar is full, I’m sure many others would be delighted if you shared the messages and practice we will be delivering today across social media so do let everyone know what they were missing!

5. Talking Tomorrows S3 pupils DYW-focused learner conversations
March – May 2016
4 SLC schools:
Duncanrig Secondary
Larkhall Academy
Hamilton Grammar
Uddingston Grammar
As Health and Wellbeing Development Officer, my manager Christine Creaney suggested that I conduct learner conversations with cross-sections of South Lanarkshire pupils to gather opinions on schools’ delivery of skills across the curriculum and collate samples of learners’ experiences as recipients of career education and work-related learning. Being a self-confessed workaholic, I suggested that I create a qualitative report to be shared with the authority on the messages it brought to light. Around 10,000 words later, the Talking Tomorrows report was born and I will be sharing some of those messages with you today.
I worked with S3 pupils from four South Lanarkshire schools – Duncanrig Secondary, Larkhall Academy, Hamilton Grammar and Uddingston Grammar – on DYW-focused learner conversations between March and May 2016 with the final report being completed towards the end of last year.
Rather than minimising the learner voice to a series of depersonalised statistics, I felt that the richer data was in the content of the young people’s statements about their experiences – especially given that some of the voices heard in this exercise came from individuals who belonged to groups within the lower deciles of the SIMD, a cohort who are very much at the top of School Improvement Plan agendas as schools attempt to close the attainment gap, both in keeping with Scottish Government directives and from an inherent moral sense of justice and equity.
“Success is being happy.”
S3 Larkhall Academy pupil
#talkingtomorrows

6. Talking Tomorrows “You’ll think that it’s ridiculous…”
This is the question young people are more or less constantly bombarded across all areas of their lives. Not an easy one to answer and perhaps some of you still ask yourselves the same thing, maybe on a daily basis.
Many young people in the leaner conversations had a clear idea of what they wanted to do in the future – everything from careers in sports, childcare, medicine and law to youth work, video blogging, chemical engineering and zookeeping. If you think zookeeping is brave, some particularly hardy individuals even planned on teaching.
However, confidence varied; one boy was very reluctant to share his aspiration saying “you’ll think that it’s ridiculous…” despite the fact that another member of the same group had the same dream and felt sure that “if I want to achieve this, I will”.
In some groups, young people were unfortunately dismissive when others shared their aspirations, which indicated that a barrier for less confident individuals may be the culture of negativity surrounding them in their peer group. Ironically, one of the young people who was particularly critical of others’ ambitions told us he hoped to become a youth football coach – a role in which encouraging others is absolutely paramount, as I'm sure Martin Lauchlan, Calderglen's partner from Strathclyde University FC would confirm.
“If I want to achieve this, I will.”

7. Talking Tomorrows Dream job Activities Employability Motivation
Following discussion of dream jobs, pupils worked in pairs/groups to do activities based on Employability Skills and Qualities, Motivation and, finally, Mindset where young people discussed whether they agreed or disagreed with ‘Fixed Mindset’-style statements about skills, work, confidence and environmental factors.
I found that many young people can identify relevant skills and qualities but struggle to talk about them. Across the board, they felt that skills are not addressed explicitly enough across the curriculum. For example, looking at creativity skills, one young person believed that “a subject being creative is mainly down to the teachers” which might suggest that a factor complicating delivery of skills across the curriculum is teacher confidence in being able to exemplify a variety of skills rather than simply subject knowledge.
Generally, young people appeared to find it quite difficult to identify the links between skills employed in the eight curricular areas in school and they expressed a desire for these themes to be more clearly highlighted in their learning across the curriculum.
Dream job
Activities
Employability
Motivation
Mindset

8. Pick a Side… Agree or Disagree?
Talking Tomorrows
The learner conversations focused on Mindset and its influence on careers and futures. I recorded pupils’ responses to five statements I put up on the screen based on factors such as environment and self-esteem, as well as the relevance of the curriculum to interests and aspirations. The young people would then move to one side of the room or the other - agree or disagree – and explain their reasons.
It was my intention that in transcribing their words, I would be able to create an authentic reflection of learner voice expressed in their language which practitioners could then employ at class level as a stimulus for discussion and as part of their own self-evaluation. Whilst a wider survey of young people from other schools may have proffered other opinions and experiences, these would most likely be variations on a theme given that the same key messages came up over and over again across establishments.
Pick a Side… Agree or Disagree?

9. Key Messages Wide variety of experiences
‘Real world’ links not explicit.
So what were these key messages?
‘The real world’ was a recurring theme in the learner conversations across each school and it was clear that young people felt they would be more engaged with the curriculum if ‘real world’ links were made more explicit
Issues of disengagement and poor behaviour were also attributed to an extent to the lack of clear connection between school education and the core skills needed to successfully enter the world of work. Young people are generally positive about school and enjoy the variety of experiences offered to them but feel that links need to be made between skills across the curriculum and contexts which will take place beyond the school gates. This manifested as a theme for all learners, whether in pursuit of a vocational or academic path beyond their time in Secondary education.
As well as linking with employment, participants felt that skills learned in school should relate to aspects of adult life and responsibility.
“Do you learn how to balance your bank account in school? Do you learn how to pay your taxes? Those are the skills we should be learning but we don’t.”

10. Key Messages Wide variety of experiences
‘Real world’ links not explicit.
A demotivating factor for learners is the worry that in a competitive job market, specialist qualifications will not be not enough to guarantee relevant employment. Furthermore, participants expressed concern that attainment of good grades in the curriculum does not ensure an ability to cope with the pressures of the workplace.
Where the work environment offers individuals the opportunity to interact with workers within the fields they wish to pursue - in other words, “people who already have that job (who) can show you how to do it” - the young people recognised that school presents conditions in which compassionate and involved teachers nurture abilities and interests to enable learners’ aspirations to become realistic prospects. They also appreciated that teachers are more sympathetic to their developing maturity than an employer is likely to be.
“I think school prepares you for work. I think work is for when you’re ready to work but school is for getting you ready to be an adult.

11. “You’ve got to have confidence as well as being smart.”
Key Messages
Learners value qualifications
Need ability to evidence skills
Whilst participants acknowledged that financial benefits might make a job desirable, the dominant belief was that the ideal occupation is one which offers the opportunity to indulge in one’s interests or your passion: “If you get to do something you enjoy, you’ve got the best job.”
Generally, the young people rejected the notion of ‘smart’ or ‘smartest’, instead acknowledging that there are different types of learners and intelligences with some who “would rather be outside or doing practical things up on their feet” rather than sitting behind a desk.
In terms of academic attainment, young people acknowledge that qualifications “open doors” but also feel that academic ability is not necessarily enough without other skills, abilities and characteristics, such as “you’ve got to have confidence as well as being smart”. As they identified teachers as positive examples of both confidence and intelligence, this highlighted that young people realise they are learning skills in communication from us on a daily basis.
“You’ve got to have confidence as well as being smart.”

12. Key Messages Learners value qualifications
Need ability to evidence skills
Throughout the learner conversations, communication was highlighted by young people as a vital skill with at least as much weight as academic achievement, such as in interview situations as well as in day-to-day interactions with colleagues and customers.
Pupils were generally pragmatic about what might be possible for them to accomplish, although some young people were more pessimistic than realistic about the likelihood of achieving their ambitions. When asked why they were embarrassed to share their aspiration for the future, one young person volunteered the explanation (and this is sad...): “Society tells you that the job you want is ridiculous.”
I really liked the confidence of one young person who described the relative freedom she felt would be offered by having "all these qualifications sitting in my pocket" as a back-up should she change her mind about her future.
“If there are people who have good qualifications and people who don’t, you’re hardly going to look at the person who doesn’t have qualifications.”

13. Key Messages Environment can impact on aspirations
Datazone typecasting is naive
Reactions to this statement varied; in some cases, an atmosphere of negativity was noticeable in response, whereas others simply rejected this notion out of hand, more or less as pigeonholing. Whilst acknowledging that “people see it in different ways”, their definition of success continually came back to quality and enjoyment of life above all else, rather than anything measurable by societal status or income. This was succinctly summed up by one participant’s statement: “Success is being happy.”
For some, this definition of success did depend on financial prosperity but others were emphatic that money is not essential to acquiring happiness.
In terms of the home influence on young people’s concepts of success, the beliefs of parents and other family members appear to go some way towards explaining learners’ expectations of themselves. In some cases, negative beliefs about certain localities are generations old and are reinforced by families with one young person stating that their family have always said that no-one from their area "has ever done anything with their life.”
“I think it comes down to confidence. You need to believe in yourself.”

14. Key Messages Environment can impact on aspirations
Datazone typecasting is naive
Nevertheless, others were reticent to judge people on surface value and reflected a resolute Growth Mindset in their approach to overcoming challenging environmental factors, believing that the core element for success is effort: “If you try hard, you will succeed but if you have a bad attitude, you won’t.”
“The stereotype that people who grow up in rough areas join gangs and get into trouble isn’t realistic.”

15. Key Messages Young people want to learn
They realise ambitions might change
Young people who took part in Talking Tomorrows were also very much in favour of classes in employability and the idea of a truly skills-based curriculum where some subjects were covered, for instance, as part of a Creativity class to make the links across learning more explicit.
Some learners expressed the concern that the current curriculum aims to develop too broad a set of skills and said they would prefer to concentrate on refining the essential ones they will need for their chosen careers to give themselves the best possible chance of success. Rather than indicating a lack of interest in the curriculum, this sentiment suggests a wish to consolidate learning to ensure readiness for work.
“A lot of times you think you know what you want to do but you don’t know what else is out there.”

16. Key Messages Young people want to learn
They realise ambitions might change
In terms of the means of learning new skills, the common threads were that learners engage most fully when they are actively involved in the process and able to see skills exemplified by either a teacher or a peer.
Whilst a huge range of information on any subject can now be gained through Google searches, students say that they still see the teacher as the resident “expert” who is in possession of the specialist skills, knowledge and experience needed to direct and advance their development.
“There’s no point in learning it if you’re not going to use it. If you know what you want to be, that’s what you should study for – how to do your job.”

17. Key Messages Aware of link between attitude and achievement
Fear of failure threatens ambitions
Overall, learners’ attitudes and feelings vary as regards their future with some feeling confident and focused, whilst others do not have a clear or optimistic picture at all of their next steps. Boys, in particular, appear to require additional support in developing motivation and confidence to take them in the right direction. Across the board, learners feel that the connections between school, the world of work and adult life should be increased to fully support their transition and prepare them for future responsibilities. In terms of addressing environmental disadvantage and overcoming negative ‘fixed’ attitudes, it is clear that schools have a responsibility to develop young people’s self-esteem as well as their academic potential.
“I want to do this. I am going to do this. It’s my future and I’m going to do what I like.”

18. Contact details Peter Kelly – Holy Cross High School
Thank you for listening this afternoon and please feel free to me if you would like me to send you a PDF of the Talking Tomorrows document and indeed a copy of this presentation should you wish to use it, for example, in an inset activity.
Ladies and gentlemen, it is now my pleasure to introduce representatives from Larkhall Academy to share practice with you regarding their community-based approaches to Developing the Young Workforce and increasing opportunities for all learners.
Peter Kelly – Holy Cross High School
#talkingtomorrows